The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

Discodog · 06-12-2010 2:36pm #1

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html#ixzz17L2KFCXB

So should we be making preparations for colder winters ?

Has the emphasis on global warning ignored a potentially more serious issue for Ireland ?

06-12-2010 2:49pm

I for one welcome our new polar bear overlords.

snow ghost · 06-12-2010 2:50pm

Probably media sensationalism, playing to the news worthiness of the current cold spell wrapped in the right-wing leanings of the Daily mail and its fairly conservative and global warming sceptic readership.

Best to find the original sceintific papers, without the journalistic spin.

Mmcd · 06-12-2010 3:04pm

I'm not sure of all the steps to verifying a scientific statement, all I know is the first one is making sure its not from the Dailymail!

gurramok · 06-12-2010 3:06pm

Isn't the mini ice age something to do with the lack of sunspots?

gbee · 06-12-2010 3:07pm

Discodog wrote: »

Has the emphasis on global warning ignored a potentially more serious issue for Ireland ?

Global warming was a scam deliberately and criminally executed to enforce more control over people by making them afraid and extracting more coin from them in taxes.

All the trends for the past twenty/thirty years were showing a cooling trend with occasional highs. This will continue, we will have severe winter conditions in Ireland for the next three to five years, then it will become mild again for maybe seven more years before cooling more severely than before, this pattern will repeat.

Gaps of 50 and 100 years can be observed in trends either upwards or downwards where even extreme opposite weather is experienced.

On top of these trends ~ local weather will be effected by the usual weather activators, so if a cold spell is coming because of La Nina, then this any cold event to hit us this year and for the next five years or so will be colder than 'normal'.

Discodog · 06-12-2010 3:25pm

The article & book are being widely discussed. People need to realise that if we have a succession of cold winters it has huge implications for the Irish economy. Many people have not financially recovered from last winter. So far this cold spell has cost millions. For once we need some serious study & appraisal of this possibility.

To many here snow is fun. To the majority it's a huge problem.

d'Oracle · 06-12-2010 3:39pm

snow ghost wrote: »

Probably media sensationalism, playing to the news worthiness of the current cold spell wrapped in the right-wing leanings of the Daily mail and its fairly conservative and global warming sceptic readership.

From the Daily Mail?
Neverrrrr.:D

Danno · 06-12-2010 3:42pm

Yet another classic example of divide and conqer by the powers-that-be.

Min · 06-12-2010 3:47pm

I think humans did great during the medieval warm period to fight manmade global warming.

From what I read, the scientists are now saying we will have cooling for 20 to 30 years then the runaway man made global warming/climate change will again be out to tax us and create more green jobs.

Meanwhile an ice free Arctic has been postponed and no doubt will be again.
AA roadwatch said the delays were due to ice.

marco_polo · 06-12-2010 3:51pm

And then there is what the two scientist actually said.

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/about-that-daily-mail-mini-ice-age-story/

Old news is old btw.

d'Oracle · 06-12-2010 3:54pm

gbee wrote: »

Global warming was a scam deliberately and criminally executed to enforce more control over people by making them afraid and extracting more coin from them in taxes.

Criminally?

Are you a crazy?

How bout this.
Global warming, whether it exists or not, will never be a threat.
Reason being is that when the oil runs out, which it is already doing, we will all be immesurably ****ed. Just so happens that the methods of abating this just happen to be the same as the potential methods of abating GW if it is real or not.

Lip up and learn to ignore conspiracy nutism, for the good of your offspring and yourself.

Bjorn Bored. · 06-12-2010 4:07pm

we are not running out of oil,thats another load of cobblers.

d'Oracle · 06-12-2010 4:40pm

Ah right sorry.
Everything is a conspiracy then.
Incidentally, what nonsense source is it this comes from?
The one which contravenes at least 2 different definitions of what peak oil is?

Bjorn Bored. · 06-12-2010 4:55pm

look there are experts on either side of the agrument, i am not gonna bring up a whole heap of links but they are there and lots of them can be seen on youtube. Peak oil is total BS, as is global warming,in my opinion.
As an example just look at the amount of oil that escaped during the Gulf spill, it just kept on gushing out long after the well was supposed to dry up, I mean literally millions of tons of the stuff,and that was just one well! Even BP admitted "surprise" at the amount of oil that spilled out.
I just dont buy it, in the 1970s they told us we would have no oil left by the 90s but here we are,still with lots of oil,and still with huge carbon taxes and increases in price, maybe in a few hundred yrs there may be a problem but right now it all about keeping the price up and keeping the people paying for it.

DublinWriter · 06-12-2010 4:58pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

we are not running out of oil,thats another load of cobblers.

Of course we are, oil in a finite resource. India and China are starting to put a huge drain on global supply.

Wertz · 06-12-2010 5:03pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

I just dont buy it, in the 1970s they told us we would have no oil left by the 90s but here we are

They told us too, that we'd have a mini ice age.
Lots of new oil fields found since the 70's and lots of people born to grow up and consume it...scientific perspectives have changed....the simple fact that consuming something depletes it hasn't.
Peak Oil may in iteslef be a conspiracy to stem the flow to poorer countries and conserve supplies...or it could simply be that we rely far too much on the stuff for a whole swathe of things besides just energy and that it eventually has to run out, since we live within a closed system with finite resources.

d'Oracle · 06-12-2010 5:15pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

look there are experts on either side of the agrument, i am not gonna bring up a whole heap of links but they are there and lots of them can be seen on youtube. Peak oil is total BS, as is global warming,in my opinion.
As an example just look at the amount of oil that escaped during the Gulf spill, it just kept on gushing out long after the well was supposed to dry up, I mean literally millions of tons of the stuff,and that was just one well! Even BP admitted "surprise" at the amount of oil that spilled out.
I just dont buy it, in the 1970s they told us we would have no oil left by the 90s but here we are,still with lots of oil,and still with huge carbon taxes and increases in price, maybe in a few hundred yrs there may be a problem but right now it all about keeping the price up and keeping the people paying for it.

I'm sorry, it doesn't matter if you produce links or experts.
The two reasons you chose to bring in are awful.

You are not comparing scales with scales. It was a huge amount of oil got out, but only huge relative to a small amount. Relative to the amount of oil consumed in powering vehicles, Powerplants, vehicles that bring oil to powerplants and vehicles, vehicles and systems to extract oil, systems to refine oil, manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, manufacturing of plastics etc....in fact to put it better, generally consumed by the population of the world, it was not massive. At all. Which is in itself indicative of the amount of oil consumed on a day to day basis in the world.

In the 70's they told you they had no oil, because the largest resources were not being made available. The result was a move away from building oil burning engines as large and inefficient as humanly possible. Nobody (who knew what they were talking about )said the worlds oil reserves oil were running out in the 70's.

There are very few experts with any real credibility who question peak oil.
There are supposed experts who are too scared to face up to the reality and allow it to cloud their conclusions.

Back on topic: This isn't a beedin' ice age.
Its a bit of cold weather.

gothwalk · 06-12-2010 5:30pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

we are not running out of oil,thats another load of cobblers.

This one, at least, is easy to defeat.

Follow my logic, please.

1) The amount of oil on the planet is finite.
2) No further oil is being created.
3) We consume oil.

Now, I'm going to assume you accept these. 1 and 3 are pretty solid for anyone, I feel. If you don't accept 2, you've a lot of explaining to do.

If we consume some of the finite amount of oil, there is is less there. If no more is being created... well, no more appears, and when we use more, there is still less remaining. If we keep using it, there will be none left. This is pretty simple. When you use something, and then there isn't any more, then you have run out. Hence, we are running out of oil.

What I think you MAY mean is that you reckon there is a great deal of oil remaining. This is possible, but not likely. If there was more oil available, our delightful capitalist system would dig it up and sell it. The supply is not increasing. We can tell this because the price is not falling. There is indeed oil in hard to reach locations - deep sea, oil sands, etc. This is very expensive to extract, and so that's not happening either.

All the evidence - that is, basic logic regarding finite amounts, and an observation of rising, not falling oil prices, suggests that we are indeed, in every meaningful manner, running out of oil.

Bjorn Bored. · 06-12-2010 5:48pm

well i still dont think we are runnin out no matter what any "experts" (employed by the oil industry incidentally say) all we need to do to get more oil is to drill deeper and deeper,difficult but not beyond modern techniuques. recently they found a well off the coast of brazil that is 4 times the size of saudi arabias capacity, as i did say in my post maybe in a few hundred yrs we will have aproblem i never said it was infinte,but we are in no danger of runnin out any time soon.

As for the topic by the OP,now that is one theory I do buy into. What scientists are realising is that low sun spot activity acyually leads to mini ice ages. We are in a very low activity cycle right now, infact throughout history there have been times like this. There is proof that the thames river froze over in the summer months sometime in the 17th century,so it happens lets not kid ourselves. You see the way I see it if capitalism can make a **** load of profits from something they will,but when mother nature decides to send us into a little ice or a volcano erupts and brings our air travel to a halt for instance age they cannot control that.

Wertz · 06-12-2010 5:54pm

The thing about drilling deeper and going to the likes of the arctic to drill increases production costs by an awful lot...when you start to see cost of production outstripping the cost people are willing to pay for the resource, then the end is nigh.

...and as mentioned it's not simply about energy...it's about many aspects of agri food sector, pharma, plastics and other industrial chemicals.
the shame about oil is that we waste so much simply burning it when it is a treasure trove of chemicals we can't really source anyplace else...

gothwalk · 06-12-2010 5:59pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

There is proof that the thames river froze over in the summer months sometime in the 17th century,so it happens lets not kid ourselves.

I'm sorry, you what?

The Thames certainly froze over in cold winters between the 15th and 19th centuries, but never in summer.

Bjorn Bored. · 06-12-2010 5:59pm

i hate posting youtube links but this shows my points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHD4U2q_p4c&playnext=1&list=PLC5496A0BDAFD9EDC&index=20

i would hate btw to think that we will have to use oil in as much as we are doing now ,i am all for cleaner energies.

drdeadlift · 06-12-2010 6:00pm

gothwalk wrote: »

This one, at least, is easy to defeat.

Follow my logic, please.

1) The amount of oil on the planet is finite.
2) No further oil is being created.
3) We consume oil.

Now, I'm going to assume you accept these. 1 and 3 are pretty solid for anyone, I feel. If you don't accept 2, you've a lot of explaining to do.

If we consume some of the finite amount of oil, there is is less there. If no more is being created... well, no more appears, and when we use more, there is still less remaining. If we keep using it, there will be none left. This is pretty simple. When you use something, and then there isn't any more, then you have run out. Hence, we are running out of oil.

What I think you MAY mean is that you reckon there is a great deal of oil remaining. This is possible, but not likely. If there was more oil available, our delightful capitalist system would dig it up and sell it. The supply is not increasing. We can tell this because the price is not falling. There is indeed oil in hard to reach locations - deep sea, oil sands, etc. This is very expensive to extract, and so that's not happening either.

All the evidence - that is, basic logic regarding finite amounts, and an observation of rising, not falling oil prices, suggests that we are indeed, in every meaningful manner, running out of oil.

I didnt know the earth stopped producing oil,i thought the oil from the deepwaterhorizon was a continuous flow as the oil was/is being produced right now.Cant find the name fro that type of oil.

Bjorn Bored. · 06-12-2010 6:21pm

gothwalk wrote: »

I'm sorry, you what?

The Thames certainly froze over in cold winters between the 15th and 19th centuries, but never in summer.

sorry you are correct i was sure i read that somewhere it did however freeze right up to april at one point,not quite summer but not far away either, if we were to have a volcano eruption combined with a freezing temperature situation,then we could be in for a repeat of 1816, known as the" year without a summer"

gothwalk · 06-12-2010 6:21pm

drdeadlift wrote: »

I didnt know the earth stopped producing oil,i thought the oil from the deepwaterhorizon was a continuous flow as the oil was/is being produced right now.Cant find the name fro that type of oil.

"Fictional".

Oil is a remnant of organic life in the geological past. It takes millions and millions of years to accrue. While there is an argument to be made saying that organic matter in the current era is forming future oil, it's doing so at the same rate - over millions of years.

What happened at the Deepwater Horizon was that oil which exists at a deep level in the earth's crust was being forced up into the water through a man-made well, under pressure. It wasn't being created or produced, it was just moving from one place (deep in the crust where it's formed) to another (the water). The actual amount that came out, while massive in environmental terms, was pretty small in oil production terms.

Possibly you're misunderstanding the way the term "oil production" is used? It means getting the oil out of the ground and turning it into forms we can use, not making oil.

gothwalk · 06-12-2010 6:31pm

Bjorn Bored. wrote: »

sorry you are correct i was sure i read that somewhere it did however freeze right up to april at one point,not quite summer but not far away either, if we were to have a volcano eruption combined with a freezing temperature situation,then we could be in for a repeat of 1816, known as the" year without a summer"

I don't believe the Thames has been frozen over in April in recorded history. Any references I can find are to January and February.

1816 was indeed referred to as the year without a summer, and there were frosts recorded in some unusual parts of the world in June (mostly in North America). However, it's not universally agreed that that was due to volcanic eruption; there have been connections with low sunspot activity made as well.

As far as most parts of the world were concerned, though, 1816 was just not very warm, rather than badly cold during the summer. It was certainly enough to cause crop failures, but far from enough to give widespread winter temperatures in summer. Or, for that matter, enough to freeze the Thames.

Mmcd · 06-12-2010 6:36pm

Okay I have a few questions about this whole thing. I'm not going to make my mind up completely on the subject because the whole point of science is to always question things but I would probably be more on the side of non man made global warming or a very small portion is man's fault.

Anyway what I'm wondering is why if this year is so cold and such then why is it due to go down in the top three warmest years since 1800? I can accept the years during the 90s being warm with increased sun activity and such but surely shouldn't it have changed enough by now that this year isn't warmer than all the 90s bar 1998 (I can get a source for this if needed - can't remember at the moment where it was).

Also in reference to the oil. The only reason people are against nuclear energy at the moment is because they can. In fifty years (probably alot longer because there is alot of oil still) people will not be so much against it when electricity drastically increases in price. Also seeing as even if oil is gone in 100 years there is still even more coal left. And I would personally not be surprised if this ends up all being irrelevant if cold fusion or some form of fusion becomes possible seeing as the timescale is quite big!

Edit: The other question is why did the mini ice age last so much longer than the 20/30 year cycles that are mentioned here?

DublinWriter · 06-12-2010 6:38pm

drdeadlift wrote: »

I didnt know the earth stopped producing oil,i thought the oil from the deepwaterhorizon was a continuous flow as the oil was/is being produced right now.Cant find the name fro that type of oil.

Huh?!??!

The earth doesn't produce oil - it's feckin' dinosaur juice!

gurramok · 06-12-2010 6:41pm

Mmcd wrote: »

Anyway what I'm wondering is why if this year is so cold and such then why is it due to go down in the top three warmest years since 1800? I can accept the years during the 90s being warm with increased sun activity and such but surely shouldn't it have changed enough by now that this year isn't warmer than all the 90s bar 1998 (I can get a source for this if needed - can't remember at the moment where it was).

It would be a gradual cooling, not a sudden cooling. Just like in the 90's it was a gradual hotting up, not sudden jumps. Another few years of this winter and last winter and we would then definitely know whats going on if the sunspots are related to the weather i'd guess.

Pangea · 07-12-2010 1:37am

Discodog wrote: »

So far this cold spell has cost millions.

Ok the day before the budget and the week after the IMF forces us to loan 85 Billion and you talk about the cold spell costing us a lot . Its nothing compared to what those feckers in the Dail are gona put us through at least with snow it gives people some joy. :pac:

The Mini Ice Age Starts Here

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